The Foo Fighters song nobody wanted to record
Whenever you’re in the studio, it’s always about working with what you’ve got. No one can claim to be inspired all the time, and there are always those experiments made up on the spot in the studio that either trigger that inspiration or become a bit of mucking about that somehow makes it onto the record. While Dave Grohl had his back against the wall when working on Foo Fighters’ The Colour and the Shape, he admitted that no one in the band wanted him to record one of their acoustic songs.
Then again, anyone who went against Grohl’s sensibilities in the early days of Foo Fighters was probably going to get a stern talking-to after the fact. Since Grohl had played every instrument on the band’s debut, he would also be the one to call the shots for whatever they needed, writing all the songs and letting the rest of the group arrange them a little bit.
Although Nate Mendel had said that he had doubts about whether the band would even succeed, he remembered being convinced of their future during a soundcheck on their first tour. After Grohl played the song ‘My Hero’, he knew that the next album would capitalise on everything Grohl set out to do on Album Number One, perhaps even with a bit more depth.
Given that Grohl was going through a heavy breakup, this is also one of the most intimate Foo Fighters records ever made. One minute, Grohl will be talking about not wanting to be strung along by his old flame on ‘Monkey Wrench’, and the next, he’ll be reminiscing about what good times they had on ‘Everlong’.
Don’t go thinking that this is a more singer-songwriter version of the band, though. The group is still as lighthearted as ever, and Grohl finally got the itch to break out the acoustic guitars when working on ‘See You’. Even though the tune is infectious enough and provides a nice midway point throughout the record, Grohl remembered that no one in the group could get on board with it.
Discussing the album’s tracks, Grohl said that he was one of the only members who actually believed in the track, saying, “[It’s] just another pop song. It was the one song that nobody wanted to put on the record, but it’s my favourite song. I think that the only reason it ended up on the record was that I re-did the drum track to make it sound like ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ by Queen.”
If you know anything about the record’s development, the fact that Grohl re-did the drum track at all sent off some alarm bells. Even though Foo Fighters had drummer William Goldsmith, the frontman thought that he was better suited for playing drums in the studio, eventually going behind his back and recording the entire album without him.
Judging the track on its own merits, though, ‘See You’ is a decent lighthearted romp, even if the song is a little bit goofy if it’s really about the same lover he had talked about leaving behind on ‘Monkey Wrench’. This could have been a trainwreck that derailed the record, but since the punk rager ‘Enough Space’ came on right after this, fans didn’t have to wait to get back to their regularly scheduled rock and roll.
